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The wilds of Russia by jeep: 'Russia On Four Wheels' preview

Kaput. Kaput. The Soviet jeep stutters and judders to a halt. This won’t be the last breakdown on Justin Rowlatt’s 3,000-mile, three-week trip across Russia in a 37-year-old UAZ 469 truck.

He’s driving east from Sochi – home to the £30billion Olympic Winter Games – through Volgograd, to Karabash, (relatively) near the border with Kazakhstan for a two-part BBC programme, “Russia On Four Wheels”. He and colleague Anita Rani examine the development of this enormous country, from the time of Stalinism to Putin’s present day.

Scroll down to watch a preview of the television programme

As Justin explores “old Russia”, Anita jumps in front of the wheel of an armour-plated Kombat T98, heading 2,500 miles from Sochi to Murmansk, in the icy arctic north. She drives through a world of oligarchs’ wives, more ‘normal’ wealth – those with just a few million in the bank – and growing consumer society.

Justin and Anita have previously traversed China and India in the same way: how did Russia compare? The scale, Justin says, was just incredible.

“We got to the birch forests of Siberia, and sombre landscapes going on forever. The sense of scale is incredible. It is just an epic country,” Justin says, pointing out that his and Anita’s journeys only cover a portion of Russia’s millions of square miles of land.

A map showing Justin's route, in yellow, and Anita's in blue

With vastness comes beauty: “We went to some beautiful places – the Urals, the Caucasus mountains, and it is just huge: there are fields that go on for miles.”

Video clips of disastrous Russian driving at the beginning of the programme – apparently many drivers have installed dash cams to record evidence of any incidences they may be involved in – are enough to make viewers wince. You wonder whether Justin, reliant on a, well, unreliable engine, will get to Karabash without being involved in a serious pile-up.

Justin compares his Russian trip with those to India and China: “They were all tough journeys – we did have a plan of where we were going but this was in line with the vagaries of the weather.” And as for those roads? At one point, the programme shows Anita screaming at the steering wheel as another driver undertakes her at a particularly hairy spot.

“The roads in India are worse than in Russia and the extremes of rich and poverty were greater. In China the roads are surprisingly good , but the distances in Russia are just beyond belief enormous. A journey can be 250 to 300 miles.”

Luckily, they escaped any serious incidents, but for Justin at least, the near-constant engine fails slowed the trip down a lot. How often were they forced to stop? “Not every day but a lot. We had a mechanic with us, Evgeny, who banged it [the jeep] with a hammer and it would work again.” And while Justin admits Russians can be grumpy, there is the sense that he warmed to the humour they deploy with those they trust. As the UAZ breaks down in the middle of the motorway on the outskirts of Sochi (“This is so dangerous!” Justin shouts at the dashboard) Evgeny jokes: “I don’t think the car wants to leave Sochi.”

Indeed, the trip is as much an exploration of Russia’s sociology and history as it is an ambitious and daredevil drive. Along the way, Justin stops to talk to people about their past, present and future. In Volgograd, he meets campaigners – garnering lots of support – who are seeking to change the city’s name back to Stalingrad (it was changed to Volgograd in 1961).

Justin's jeep on the road, heading out to the Urals

“There was almost nostalgia for Stalin. In the West this is easy for us to forget, but people had jobs and security under Stalin. They didn’t have good food or a variety of food but they had food to eat; there were certainties.”

And there is support for Vladimir Putin, the current President of Russia, too: “We think of Putin as perhaps comical, but a lot of Russians think he is brilliant news – a direct link to the strong Russia of the past.”

Through the people he meets and the places he visits, Justin was struck by “the sense of living history.”

“In Volgograd, there is a war memorial, and you really feel the heroism and the horror of World War II. We are so obsessed with our own role that we forget so much more [that happened to the Russians],” he says.

Justin meets two war veterans, Anatoli and Vladimir, who fought at the Battle of Stalingrad, who demonstrate Russians’ differing opinions about their history: “No one is being arrested at night, at least…not without good reason,” Vladimir says. Anatoly replies, with a shrug of his shoulders, “Even he and I are different…he is a communist; I am a democrat.”

Back to the drive. At one point, Justin is forced to give up on his ailing Communist truck: “driving was just too time consuming - with the train we could travel overnight”. From Volgograd to Samara, he travels in a pillow lined carriage instead, aboard “an old train from what must have been the end of the Soviet era.”

“It was fantastic it was like a Great Train Journey. The cabins were very comfortable and you could make tea. Russians are grumpy and moody but there was a service culture there.”

A stadium at Sochi, which is hosting the most expensive Winter Olympics ever

What did the trip tell Justin about Russia’s future? Will it become more open to tourists? Volgograd “is quite attractive – it was so devastated but it has an Imperial feel.”

He seems taken, too, with the city that is to host the Winter Olympics. “Sochi is wonderful – so varied – in the morning you can be having coffee on the beach, and in the afternoon go skiing.”

And yet he does not think that hosting the Winter Olympics are about attracting more tourists. “I don’t think Sochi is about turning Russia into a tourist attraction – you still need a visa to go – they could make it easier. I think [Sochi] is about Putin’s vision for Russia, a shop window for Russia.”

With Russia, China and India behind them, where else are Anita and Justin going to tackle on four wheels? Justin says: “The obvious place next would be Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. They all are fascinating new frontiers of economic development which would be great to explore.”

The two-part programme “Russia On Four Wheels” is on BBC Two at 9.30pm tonight and Wednesday January 22.